“Ok, it’s about damn time to continue the mainquest. Oh man, here’s the side quest continuation, I might as well do it since I’m around. Oh, I’ve stumbled upon a karaoke. Should I play so- FUCK YEAH I should play some karaoke minigame. I’m gonna beat that high score, you’ll see. Oh, it’s that dodging attacks minigame… is it me being dumb or it’s kinda hard? Oh, right, the mainquest. Oh boy, lost some health in a street brawl, gotta eat something. Oh yeah, you get bonus points for eating all the shit in all of the restaurants, I’ll just eat some dishes here so I’ll have less of a menu to go through next time. Oh, found a card-“Yakuza 0. 13 hours in. Still on chapter 1. I’ll never finish this fucking game.

Grand Theft Auto III

7,5/10

13 hours playtime

no achievements

More

I’ve been postponing actually beating this game for a variety of reasons, and now I see I wasn’t completely wrong with my judgement. I could easily describe the whole game as “not as […] as Vice City”. It’s not as fun, not as player-friendly, not as polished, the music is not as good, the characters are not as interesting and entertaining. The “gang hate” aspect is straight-up cancer which ultimately makes your life so much harder if you actually try to 100% it. Oh, but that’s kinda pointless, since you get absolutely nothing. At least you get a lousy T-shirt in Vice City. I have no idea why Claude’s aim is slightly off crosshair’s target, but it made the shootout sections of the game way harder than they already are. It is by no means a bad game, but it seems kinda rough around the edges and I love Fernando Marti- I mean, Vice City so much more.

Slayaway Camp

That was a nice timekiller puzzle game - it’s easy to learn, but it gets more complicated with each new level, and that game has a lot of them. In fact, I didn’t even tackle 1/3 of hard mode levels before I completed all of the achievements. I already felt sort of burned out at that moment, so I was satisfied with leaving it there. The whole game is based around horror movie parody shtick and it’s not exceptionally funny most of the time, but it doesn’t try way too hard with it’s humour anyway. I wish there was less grinding involved for getting some of the achievements, but I only have myself to blame for trying to get them all, I guess.

Katharsis

It’s a somewhat crappy russian Stanley Parable-like game(sorry, comrades). It is really inconsistent with its themes and tone; it falls flat when it tries to be funny, it’s too predictable and unoriginal with its commentary at times, and it’s too crammed with other things to be all sappy at the end all of a sudden, coming off as downright tone deaf. It had a few interesting moments, but the game is so all over the place and there’s just way too much weird (not in a good way) design choices crammed inside for no good reason at all. The game scenes themselves aren’t inherently bad, it’s the way they are put together is. My biggest complaint is the maze puzzle, which adds nothing to the game whatsoever and could easily be cut, only making it slightly better.

Little Inferno

7/10

3 hours playtime

no achievements

More

Steam replay. Puzzle-ish something in the usual satirical spirit of Tomorrow Corporation. The burning mechanic is pretty satisfying. The game is full of weird yet simplistic humour, and that’s exactly the words that can be used to describe the game as a whole. It’s not that long, and I wish devs were commited to the idea of this game not wasting your time (although the game being pointless and time-wasting was the point, but still) and didn’t add that cooldown time when you’re trying to buy the same thing for the second time and made delivery times somewhat shorter. It just drags the overall quick and fun gameplay down. If you let that slide (or simply won’t try to do any combo burning), it’s cute, funny and heartwarming.

“Ok, it’s about damn time to continue the mainquest. Oh man, here’s the side quest continuation, I might as well do it since I’m around. Oh, I’ve stumbled upon a karaoke. Should I play so- FUCK YEAH I should play some karaoke minigame. I’m gonna beat that high score, you’ll see. Oh, it’s that dodging attacks minigame… is it me being dumb or it’s kinda hard? Oh, right, the mainquest. Oh boy, lost some health in a street brawl, gotta eat something. Oh yeah, you get bonus points for eating all the shit in all of the restaurants, I’ll just eat some dishes here so I’ll have less of a menu to go through next time. Oh, found a card-“

Aw haha, I know this feeling all too well :D It can be really quite discouraging when you put tens of hours into a game and have “nothing” to show for it. I wish you the best of luck making some progress with Yakuza!

Oh and by the way, I think that Vice City is still the best GTA game 👍

For me it’s more like feeling discouraged because the game manages to distract you from stuff a little too well, and the way I fall for it hook, line and sinker every time makes me feel totally overwhelmed - it’s not like it’s a bad thing, but I just feel I’m gonna be stuck with it for a while. Me being OCD completionist doesn’t help either.

Oh and by the way, I think that Vice City is still the best GTA game

Maybe it’s not really fair to praise her as such - I mean, it might just be that it was my first GTA and I have a lot of fond memories with it - but I do think so too. It has it’s fair share of bullshit moments, but I’ve beat it, like, a dozen times throughout the years, did my first 100% GTA completion with it and I still keep going back to it for some reason. That’s the power of baby duck syndrome for you, I guess.

Heheh, I think it’s totally fair to praise Vice City as the best game of the GTA series :P
GTA 3 was the first “proper” PC game that I played all those years ago so it’s got a special place in my heart, but Vice City is simply awesome. A little too colorful for my taste, but that’s how things used to be in the 80’s I imagine. It also features the best radio ever, VRock. I extracted that audio file and I’ve been using it as a custom radio in all the other GTA games I played :D

I didn’t enjoy the story of San Andreas all that much (<- racist) and GTA IV was a bit too “open world” for me, plus the game constantly demanded that I socialize with the NPCs and I just kinda lost interest about half-way through. Like, if I wanted to socialize, I’d go outside. Leave me alone, game :D